The Law of Lines

To read this book is to be given a code to help decipher this indecipherable world. . . . The unexpected loss of an under-appreciated father and a misunderstood half-sister, their deaths wrapped in suspicion, brings the two protagonists into each other's paths. Is their meeting a nightmare? Or does it bring hope? After making their way through this irrational world that the author has thrown us into, the reader will find themselves on surer ground. Kyung-sook Shin, international bestselling author of Please Look After Mom Reading Hye-young Pyun's work reminds me of taking science class as a child and my first time seeing onion cells under a microscope. Pyun slices off a piece of the most everyday layer of life, places it on a slide, and reveals to us the cellular division of emotions that we've never seen before. She surprises us and makes us think, 'So this is what life has looked like all along?' Un-su Kim, author of The Plotters Praise for City of Ash and Red AN NPR 2018 GREAT READ A BARNES & NOBLE BEST HORROR BOOK OF 2018 City of Ash And Red will pull you into its nightmare. . . . I've taken to calling it High-Rise if J.G. Ballard took on a whole neighborhood instead of just one luxury apartment building. It's a good book and it's a nasty one. . . . Whether you want to believe this is a grim look at the human condition or an exciting bit of weird fiction, it's worth a read. NPR Hye-Young Pyun creates a dark allegory of humankind in this apocalyptic novel. . . . A horrific nightmare that won't soon be forgotten. --Shelf Awareness Another gruesome masterpiece. Crime Reads, Daily Thrill This book is not for everyone, but then neither was The Vegetarian, or Confessions, or The Cat in the Coffin. It's also not easily classified: Horror? Dystopian? Thriller? Doesn't matter. If it's to your taste, this book will keep you reading long past any previously established threshold of morbidity. --LitHub Devoutly stark and in tune with the pangs of urban alienation . . . Pyun offers her work to an international audience on her own terms, by speaking directly to the state of alienation made familiar to much of the world by globalization. . . . The amnesiac protagonist is left unnamed because he is us. --Jae Won Chung, Boston Review An apocalyptic tale on the human condition, rife with Kafkaesque paranoia and brutal isolation. --This Is Horror Haunting. --World Literature Today Dark and harrowing . . . [Pyun is a] master at maintaining tension, even in the most everyday scenes. Hair-raising passages abound. . . . Sora Kim-Russell has done a particularly good job of getting the voice of the narrator just right. --Wasafiri A novel that could easily have been written by Kafka himself. . . . And for those unfamiliar with the Kafkaesque, know that if you feel a familiar tug at your heart when you read of a man lost and frightened, even as an adult, wondering how his life became what it is, and why he cannot find help where he expects it to be, know that you will find company in this story and with its readers. Books and Bao A daring post-apocalyptic novel from a powerful rising literary voice. . . . A highly hypnotic tale that will draw you in and hit you where it hurts. Pyun's novel The HoleI was a masterclass and this one is no different. Signal Horizon Kafkaesque . . . Those with a taste for creepy suspense will be rewarded. Publishers Weekly Kim-Russell's ability to replicate Pyun's stifling terror repeats here . . . Stripped of identity, language, and ethics, the cost of survival for Pyun's protagonist proves to be his very humanity. A slap-in-the-face parable of the perils of society failures. Pyun's suffocating tale reveals a future all too possible and real. Booklist A story that strikes fear and uneasiness into the reader. Evilcyclist's Blog A wonderfully malevolent, Kafkaesque tale of a man who is completely and utterly lost . . . Hye Young-Pyun's skill is to make you think that, just when it could not get worse for him, it does. The Modern Novel Chilling . . . The hits keep coming. A Bookish Type Pyun's narration creates a wonderful sense of desperation in her central character, sending him scrambling towards any attempt at salvation even as his life falls to pieces . . . . It's that feeling of paranoia as things continue to dissolve within the narrator's mind that truly sets the book apart. --B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy blog, Best Horror Books of 2018 Disturbing, but impressive. --Complete Review In this tautly knit novel by a brilliant stylist, a world of darkness you'd never want to encounter in real life unfolds mysteriously before your eyes. Soon you'll find yourself gripped by the fear that what the protagonist experiences could happen to you. Yet, captivated by the enthralling writing and brutal imaginings, you won't be able to put the book down until you've experienced its darkness to the very end. Kyung-sook Shin, Man Asian Prize-winning author of Please Look After Mom and The Court Dancer In the tradition of Kafka, Camus, and Murakami, Pyun takes us on an unflinching, intensely visceral journey through the dark and nightmarish underbelly of our mundane world. Heinz Insu Fenkl, author of the PEN/Hemingway Award finalist Memories of My Ghost Brother As a story of one man's struggle to maintain sanity against the odds, it's. . . consistently gripping. Kirkus Reviews A story of loss so affecting that it borders on existential vertigo. Sunyoung Park, associate professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Gender Studies, USC City of Ash and Red is a tale of survival and ruin that leaves no room for even a single drop of comfort to seep in. Pyun builds an airtight masterpiece of agony and mystery with her masterfully crafted sentences, and she colors it with the ash-gray of ruin and the fiery red of life. --Korea Economic Daily A story of modern humanity's survival and downfall as told through the tale of a man who finds his life ruined for reasons he doesn't understand, in a city rife with disease, soiled by trash, and teeming with rats. . . . [with narrative] tension like a discordant note that jangles the nerves to keep the reader hooked all the way to the last page. --Munhwa Ilbo Hye-young Pyun has made a name for herself in literature with her exquisite depictions of a world of strange and grotesque imagination. . . . In City of Ash and Red, the central motifs are contagion and rats. . . . Though the world she describes is a fictional one, the story of the extinction and denial of a weak man who must persevere within that world feels all too real. Perhaps this unpleasant sense of reality comes from the realization that our own world is stranger than the monstrous one that Pyun invents, that we ourselves are no stronger than rats. But what can we do? Just as the powerless protagonist must somehow survive in the unknown space of Country C, we too have no choice but to persevere no matter what life throws at us. --Kukmin Ilbo